A major advance in the field of synthetic biology is the concept of the standardized part, a unit of DNA that is flanked by standard prefix and suffix sequences that enable modular assembly of composite parts from basic parts. Parts may be stored and reused or shared between research labs. The wide variety of different composite parts that may be combinatorially constructed from basic parts and previously assembled composite parts enables a large and growing set of synthetic biology applications.
While a major advancement in the field, at the same time the assembly of DNA parts into larger DNA constructs is currently a limiting technology in the engineering of biological system (DNA assembly for synthetic biology: from parts to pathways and beyond, T. Ellis, et al., Integr. Biol., 2011, 3, 109-118). Laborious recombinant cloning processes that take several days are required to combine just two DNA parts into a new construct. New biological systems composed of many genes may only be realized after weeks or months of cloning.